Label: DHR Format: CD,2LP
Lurking behind the Atari Teenage Riot pastiche cover and name is of course none other than Alec Empire, but in ever so strange a mood as to be simultaneously at his most inspired and deranged. Sourced entirely from the programmable music edition of a Gameboy, We Punk Einheit! takes the machine to its limits. Bleeping and blipping like a demented games console circa 1983, the Gameboy becomes a bit of a monster in Empire’s hands, as he explores seemingly every possible combination of 8-bit sound in ways the designers probably never envisaged in their most fevered moments.
There’s seventy-five minutes and twenty-five tracks of hypnotically engaging weirdness on this album, at once dehumanised and distorted. It’s the sound of a low-tech computer game listened to on PCP, heightened and transfigured into a parallel universe of the ultimate in bleepy techno where the Space Invaders took control of the reality studio. Empire’s trademark distortion remains, attenuated into a struggling buzz, but identifiably as jagged as his more conventional recordings, as do titles such as “Fuck Me D/A Style”, “No Disease Sex” and “No Humanity Allowed”. A mid-range assault on the very idea of what is appropriate in a recording of electronic music, this is gloriously, radically, unhinged, and guaranteed to disgust the more po-faced while delighting those of a warped disposition.
-Freq1C-
